Women in the cage, burning goats and H. C. Andersen's love life was among the topics when GAFFA had a chat with current concert Elvis Costello

By Espen Strunk

Elvis Costello guests Hall Aarhus on Saturday 2 June. We have caught him for a status report.

What can audiences expect from the concert?

It starts with what we call the overture, as it is just a show, and then play 4:00 to 5:00 fast rock'n'roll songs from the hip. We have a dancer who consume gogo cage and as "a good shake tail feathers." People get a moment to see the set design with the large wheel of fortune and speculate a little about what all goes on while we play some songs that people might know. So I present myself as the evening's compere, I take a role and also have an assistant who goes down in the audience and find people who seem to want to get up on stage and turning the wheel. And from there we take the differently from night to night, depending on what wheel gives us. Sometimes the first song that comes up, a song one might expect that we would finish with, sometimes it's a ballad, sometimes a well-known song, other times a song that absolutely no trace known. So it means that people sometimes have to wait to hear their favorites.

And we have "jackpots" on the wheel, as are words like "Time" or "Girl" and if the word in the title of, say, five songs, then we play the five songs in a row. If the word is "Girl" we play "This Year's Girl," "Spooky Girlfriend", "Party Girl" (sulky girl), if the word is "Time" we play "Strict Time," "Man Out of Time" and The Rolling Stones "Out of Time". It allows us to confront bagkataloget in a more random manner; the older songs are suddenly played into our hands in an unexpected way and it brings a freshness to it to play them. We may end up playing a song that has been our closing number in thirty years, during the show's first five minutes.

We also have songs with just guitar or piano, so there is also variation. We try to make it fun and also get greeted people, people come up from the audience and some are very outgoing and would like to participate, while others are more shy and must be persuaded. Someone would like into the go-go cage and show how good they are to dance .... you see all kinds of fun pages that are wants and sometimes people suitor, not to me but to each other. It's pretty good and sometimes quite touching, and sometimes people say something, then it dawns on me that a song has meant something to those who would never have occurred to me. So although it's a piece down the road is a satirical, Vaudevillle style show, it also has some emotional moments.

New stories

You hatched the original concept ("The Spectacular Spinning Songbook", ed.) 25 years ago. How did the idea, and what makes you come back to it now?

Well, for the same reasons as I conceived it then. In 1986 or '85 I think that I had so many songs that it was hard to choose, so simple, it was actually: "let's find a new and fun way to make the song selections more indiscriminate in". And then we also have some cover versions, which one would never expect that we played ... and the same with the new wheel of fortune. Now there's obviously gone twenty-five years, so I have more songs and an even greater stylistic variation. From ballads to rock'n'roll songs, everything, you know.

So it makes even more sense now, at least for me. It's just another way to tell a story ... every night when we go on stage, we tell a new story out of all these pieces of stories that we have been told the plates through the years. Whether it's piano ballads, acoustic guitar songs, electric band tracks, things I've made for larger ensembles with more unusual occasions.

Speaking of cover versions ... you have contributed to the tribute record to Dylan, which Amnesty International has published in connection with their anniversary. Why did you choose, of all the songs there are to choose from, to interpret the "License to Kill"?

Well, I always love the song and unfortunately it is a song that never gets out of sync with the times and become out of date. It is one of the less canonized songs, and I also wanted to do something a little unusual about it, musically .... it is not especially loyal to Bob's version. I would extend the structure a bit and do some vocal harmonies. I play everything himself on it, that I like to do sometimes ... just go into the studio without a band and be a little more playful with the recording.

Your career has stretched over many different genres, and generally you are not so easy to capture, define as an artist ...

It seems I'm not a bad thing .... it is in a way your job to do it, not mine ..No, but my question is simply whether it has been a deliberate strategy on your part, or whether it's just been like this?

In part because it's probably just that I'm curious. I grew up in a house filled with music, I belong to the third of four musical generations in my family ... things that may seem to be large jumps, has not occurred to me to be so cross. It does not make it better, but it's just how I hear it. I wonder not the strategies, I just do things also leads a thing to the next. You may find yourself in the process of working with people you admire, you may be offered opportunities to work with things that you have no experience with. But once you've made them, then you have the experience and take something away. Not everything needs to be a million seller, not everything needs to be timeless, or successful, not even artistically. But you learn something from it.

I think people take it too seriously ... all the analytic is meaningless to me. When it comes down to it there is nothing of what is important besides your loved one's life and wellbeing. To care for each other and trying not to stab each other in the back, and so it goes so very well. None of it means anything .... there is nothing in the pop music that is brilliant, there's just good, whether it has good intentions and come from the heart or not. I've never made anything from an analytical point of view or as an exercise or to get myself to appear smart. I've done everything, because I've been curious. And if it has worked grandiose or pretentious to others, then it's their problem. It's just the way they think, and it's not how I think ...

Grateful Host

Now we're talking about people you admire, your love for George Jones, the well known and you've also recorded a duet with him. What's so special about Jones?

Uh, I assume that you know him, or makes you just that question?

I appreciate his music, which is why I ask ...

Ok. Well, you have to hear "Mr. Fool" to find the answer. You can select any of his records and play it for someone on Venus, and he would know that it was a good singer, you know. I never thought of him as a country singer. He is a great singer like Billie Holiday is a great singer, as Hank Williams and Maria Callas is. He is a unique singer and sings soulful like James Carr did, and it's just a fantastic ... nothing. Just as with Nat Cole is not all the songs he sings brilliant songs, but he will get something beautiful out of them all. He just can not sing a bad phrase, you know.I'd like to talk a little about the "Spectacle" (Costello's TV show from 2008-10, ed.). How the idea came up in the first place?

Oh, have you seen it? Well, it was something people had asked me to consider for ten years and then got Elton John and David Furnishs production is realized with two American broadcasters. We made a series of shows over a few years and I think you are just beginning to see them right now in Scandinavia .....

It's true.

.. But they have been recorded for couple of years ago and it was a great experience. It was great to be able to work with all people and that they trusted me and came and played some music with me. I think it has some good shows ...

Do you have any favorite episodes?

All together, really. I'm just grateful to all the people who came. Of course I have some favorite artists, I really like the show with Smokey Robinson, and also where we put together a band with Allen Toussaint, Levon Helm, and Nick Lowe, it was a great evening. And with Bruce Springsteen .... he was so generous this time, and I am very grateful.

Costello's unfinished

I hope you are ok I ask, why was Jenny Lind-opera (shelved cooperation with the Danish Royal Opera, led by Kasper Bech Holten from Hans Christian Andersen celebration in 2005) never really for anything?

Oh, it was a difficult time. I wrote it at a time when many things changed in my life and I felt with far behind in their work. But I wrote all the songs that made their debut in Copenhagen. And there were many things that year, which had less connection with Andersen than my songs had. But I did not end the entire soundtrack, what you got to hear was more final arias, in lack of better words, if it had been a great opera. But I enjoyed doing it, just telling a story through fragmented scenes, and I think that there are some good songs in it. And then of course I turned back to them and recorded some of them for the album "Secret, Profane and Sugarcane" (2009). I transposed them to the instruments you hear on the record: violins, dobro and mandolin, because they seemed to fit it. And we spent even acoustic guitar and banjo on stage in the original production ... but it was a nice option, and Kasper Holten showed me a lot of confidence in asking me do such a job and was very patient. For it was a time of massive upheaval in my life, and it was difficult even to imagine to finish some work, really. And especially something so different.

And not all my ideas ..... you are dealing with something that is very precious to many people, and understandably, in particular in Denmark, and I took great liberties in history, it was in fact a fantasy. But there is nothing new in taking historical figures and present them in a slightly different really, it was not a new idea I had to do with that. But the story itself was an original idea; contrast between Andersen and Barnum gives a completely different look at Jenny Lind. So I regret not at all that I did it, but of course I regret that I did not finish it. And now I am the father of five twin boys, so the idea to stop and resume the earlier works - it's now six or seven years old - is ... that is hard to imagine that complete it. But I always thinks that there might be a way to put songs on the other, interesting characters together. Especially his teacher, Dr. Rector, who is him I had the most material around. Then one day I just have twenty minutes to spare, I make it up, ha-ha.

Before we suddenly run out of time, I have to ask yourself: what do you do just before you go onstage? Do you have any rituals?

I like always to burn a goat just before ...

Ok. And what's on your food list?

I'm not superstitious, and I am not very ritualistic, I pray not only purple furniture and stuff. I only need some simple things: hot water, cold water and some water, which is somewhere in between. I pray really not very much, and there is no goat burning or strange Satanic rituals in my backstage room. It's usually just to get the guitars tuned and make sure that the shoes sitting on the right foot.

A kick for feminists

As we have partly touched on, you have throughout his career made a lot of work with people. Why has it been so important?

All music is cooperation if you think about it ... I just think people put too much around here the idea of ​​collaborations. Unless you want to be acoustic solo folk singer all your life you will come to work with your band, and after a while I got the chance to play with some other musicians on King of America (Costello's tenth studio album from 1986, ed.) . So I wrote some songs with Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach ... throughout my career have been those occasional collaborations.

Finally: you can shed some light on which projects to the program after this tour is over?

No, not really. I have not planned anything, just waiting for something to pop up. Not a sheet of writing or recording, just nothing.

Let us for a moment return to the gogo-dancer in a cage on the upcoming tour ...

I knew you would, I knew you could not resist!

You are not nervous about the feminist critique of such a gimmick?

If at this stage really think we believe they are serious, they have not kept pace. Melissa, who plays the character, is a smart business woman who likes to dance. What can I say? You may take it with her. We do not do anything to denigrate anyone, and people go in there of their own volition. I think it is healthy to see some not necessarily particularly ideal physical specimens among the gentlemen of the gogo cage, and when you come to the show you will see the humor in it. I think that even the most hard-hearted feminist hardliner will get a kick out of it.

Patrick McManus - or Elvis Costello, if you will - has never been quite so easy just to classify or put into predefined boxes. Since the undersigned had a chat with him before the concert, he explained, among other things the following:

- I think people take it too seriously ... all the analytic is meaningless to me. When it comes down to it there is nothing of what is important besides your loved one's life and wellbeing. To care for each other and trying not to stab each other in the back, and so it goes so very well. None of it means anything .... there is nothing in the pop music that is brilliant, there's just good, whether it has good intentions and come from the heart or not. I've never made anything from an analytical point of view or as an exercise or to get myself to appear smart. I've done everything, because I've been curious. And if it has worked grandiose or pretentious to others, then it's their problem.

Personalized postmodernism

On the current tour - including tonight in Aarhus - Costello has chosen to accentuate the unpredictability further to dust off an 25 year old trick of: The Spectacular Spinning Songbook. Wheel of Fortune, which means the audience will decide tonight's set, while a go-go dancer writhing in a cage in the stage left side, where several members of the audience also have the opportunity to unfold during the evening. The focus remains, however, Costello, not only as a ringmaster in top hat and cane sølvbeslået, but also as a front man for a tight rocking trio that evening diverterer with more than two hours of vigorous action.

Characteristically traversed the set of rock historical references in the form of bits of songs son Hendrix's Angel, The Beatles Day Tripper and The Animals early hit Do not Let Me Be Misunderstood. Characteristically, because there is some justification to say that Costello rather than being an actual divinely-songwriter himself, appears as a personified, postmodern musical melting pot. Probably he is a child of the end-seventies New Wave, but the musical universe, one steeped in pop music and rock'n'roll from the late 50s and early 60s.

Madness Rock

The initial handful of songs have also almost like a kind of distorted madness-rock'n'roll out of time, while in the course of the set will be more nuances in the game. Costello himself emerges as a brilliant singer - sometimes even without a microphone - and guitarist in several wild solo ride. A careful interpretation of his role model George Jones A Good Year For the Roses is a highlight, and the inclusion of public works excellent, with singles and couples, men and women are invited up the wheel and dancing in the cage in varying degrees of enthusiasm.

It all unfolds in an ironic Vaudeville universe with scantily clad ladies and Costello as it once sourly sarcastic and sympathetic compere and protagonist. His perhaps most memorable hit So Like Candy argued with Alison in honor of a young couple, after a middle-aged men have danced themselves enthusiastically and confidently going up on stage.

It's all nice and fun and work - despite the classy musicianship, which exhibited tonight - well, in addition to tonight's show, which appears as a postmodern potpourri in a deliberately anachronistic and ironic setup rather than an approximation to the authenticity ideal, as otherwise it is so prevalent in the popular musical Parnassus. It is both clever, entertaining and genuine rocking, on the other hand, avoids not quite a natural, theatrical distance. Mon engaged not emotionally, like a Springsteen or Dylan in concert situation. But you entertained nonetheless excellent.

PLEASE will someone share final audio-bit in any format 'GOD SAVE THE QUEEN' - no sign yet of e.g. Youtube vid. Can't be arsed yet to download whole show for this - people uploading other stuff from me now on DIME.